Pope Leo XIV Is American: Does That Matter?
(ANALYSIS) Until now, an iron law said no American can be elected pope. It seemed improper to combine political superpower with a spiritual one.
So, does the astonishing emergence of Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV signal a decline in the United States’ global stature and influence? Or a growing gap between the Roman papacy and the American presidency? Or were Prevost’s skills and profile so obvious that only his U.S. citizenship might have prevented his election?
Sheer talent compelled the cardinals to elect Pope John Paul II despite hesitation about Polish citizenship in Cold War times.
Leo’s ascent, however, creates practical issues. His onetime home in suburban Dolton, Ill., by coincidence on sale by auction through June 18, is suddenly a future shrine or tourist attraction. And according to The Pillar, “some senior officials” in the Vatican are pondering whether Leo might be forced to renounce his celebrated U.S. citizenship! More on that below.
How could an American possibly win? Many cardinals from far-flung areas had never even met each other yet coalesced behind Leo with remarkable speed on the first full day of voting. Though the cardinal electors are sworn to supposedly strict secrecy, leaks to the media are typified by this Religion News Service scenario. Pietro Parolin, well-known as Vatican secretary of state, took the early lead but lacked appeal to reach the needed two-thirds majority.
The same with conservative favorite Peter Erdo of Hungary. The progressive camp could not unite behind a candidate. With rich pastoral experience as a missionary and bishop in Peru, Prevost’s candidacy built from Latin America’s 21 cardinals, then the 10 Americans and six Canadians. International stature and friendships came from years as the Augustinian order’s globe-trotting head, then leadership of the Vatican agency that assesses bishop candidates worldwide. Through it all, Leo alienated neither the left nor the right. Voilà, they had a new pope.
Inevitably, the shocker produces jests about how badly Leo’s beloved Chicago White Sox need prayers, or deep-dish pizza conquering Rome. One blogger mocked Americans’ money-making zeal, proposing sponsorship deals to help Vatican budget woes. This papal election is brought to you “by FanDuel, Official Betting Partner of the Vatican.” Even a Mass in Leo’s honor, scheduled for June 14 at Chicago’s Rate Field, sold out within minutes.
But how will Prevost’s formative three decades in the United States before life in Peru and Rome shape his church of 1.4 billion souls? Yes, the cardinals must be thinking an American could solve the Holy See’s $98 million annual deficit, severely underfunded pensions, and declining donations. They may also hope his solid administrative experience might tame the curia, the Vatican’s notoriously Italianate “deep state.”
Perceptive analysis on America’s impact came last week in a New York Times opinion piece by Matthew Walther, editor of The Lamp magazine. Not long ago, Catholicism in many lands was “a total social organism” entered at baptism and left only upon excommunication or death. But U.S. Catholicism has always been a “voluntary association” without “state power, amid a variety of other religious options, often fighting for its survival.” This is now the faith’s situation across the globe, so Walther beleives the new pontiff's “uniquely American experience” could be “among his greatest assets.”
Pursuing this concept, Catholicism in pluralistic America faces both rising “nones” without religious involvement and a Christian culture that’s inherently Protestant. Catholicism has huge baptismal membership, but declining participation. Leo’s own boyhood church in Dolton had to disband in 2011. In Leo’s Peru, Protestant numbers were negligible a half-century ago, but the World Christian Encyclopedia now counts 5.6 million evangelical, Pentecostal and other churchgoers alongside 28.2 million Catholics. The tradition of Leo’s Augustinian order, his binational career and his own family’s multiracial forebears should encourage sophisticated missionary outreach.
Then, there’s language. From an hourlong interview with the cardinal who became Benedict XVI, this writer can attest he was the first pope fully fluent in English. Leo is a native speaker of the one language shared by educated peoples in all nations, which will be a plus. Might his straightforward sermons lead to papal decrees blessedly free from the stiffly artificial rhetoric of theology professors and Vatican bureaucrats?
As for the American’s agenda, he well knows how Catholicism struggles with priests’ sexual predation toward minors, which first emerged in the U.S. as a major scandal four decades ago. Leo’s own track record is assailed in a formal March 25 appeal to the Vatican linked off this statement from U.S. abuse survivors. Cleaning up this ruinous outrage is likely Leo’s most essential task.
Presumably, the new pope adopted the name of predecessor Leo XIII to honor his farsighted 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum” (“Of New Things”) regarding modern issues of labor, capitalism and socialism. The newer Leo brings to the papacy experience of both American democracy and economics and Peru’s Communist terrorists and right-wing military dictators. (Note that an 1899 apostolic letter from Leo III warned against “the spirit of the age” typified by so-called “Americanism.” Here’s a conservative’s account of those complexities).
On issues that transfix the Western Left, there’s no indication Leo would allow married priests except in jurisdictions that already have them, or extend LGBT causes beyond a divisive 2023 declaration approved by Pope Francis, but largely abhorred by many Africans. It allows blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples, but insists they not be confused with sacramental marriage, which is exclusively heterosexual.
We await Leo’s response to a study expected later this year on whether to ordain women deacons. Female priests were “definitively” forbidden by Pope John Paul II in 1994. Marinated-in-America Leo will surely enhance leadership roles for sisters in religious orders and lay women. Francis appointed three women to Leo’s powerful bishop-vetting agency, which he no doubt approved. One of Leo’s first papal visits was with Sister Simona Brambilla, chosen by Francis in January as the first woman to head a major Vatican department, one that supervises men’s and women’s religious orders. On May 22, Leo appointed Sister Tiziana Merletti as its No. 2.
Observers assume Leo will join fellow American bishops in prodding the Trump administration on challenges facing the poor and immigrants. However, Rome's biggest geopolitical problem is whether to change Francis’s soft line with China. Leo's May 25 public greeting said prayers around the world express “concern and affection for Chinese Catholics and their communion with the universal church.” Francis reached a much-disputed 2018 plan (details still secret) that includes cooperation with the atheistic government on bishop appointments. Critics contend China has violated this deal and blatantly persecutes believers.
Finally, there’s Leo’s dual U.S. and Peruvian citizenship. Renunciation of the U.S. tie would be a political bombshell. But The Pillar says three problems vex some Vatican officials. By law, U.S. citizens must present a U.S. passport when re-entering their homeland, but Leo is monarch of the sovereign Vatican City State and heads of state never carry passports. Secondly, U.S. citizens overseas must file detailed annual financial disclosures that could be problematic for the Pope.
Worse, Leo’s citizenship could theoretically expose him to liability in sexual abuse lawsuits from America.
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He is a recipient of the Religion News Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.